x: "Stephen Colwell's The Five Cotton States and New York "
x: Link to Sherman DeBow's review
Thanks, I've added all three links to "favorites" for future reference.
In the mean time, reading the first few paragraphs of Kettell's book shows he's making a full-throated defense of slavery, something which I doubt if anyone here would accept.
And it confirms my suspicion that when referring to "the South", he means all fifteen slave-states, including the four border states, and therein lies one deep flaw in his analysis.
A more accurate analysis would divide "the South" into three general sections: Deep (near 50% slaves), Upper ( about 25% slaves) and Border (less than 10% slaves).
Then we would find that agricultural and other achievements he credits to "the South" come mostly from Border and Upper South states, while the Deep South focused almost entirely on producing cash crops for export.
I also note with concern that Kettell claims: at the time of the Revolutionary War the South wanted to abolish their slavery, but the North wouldn't permit it.
Surely, that is a fantasy worthy of its own "land" in Disney World! ;-)
I think you may have misread that part. He claims that the South wanted an immediate end to the slave trade, not slavery, while "the North" insisted it continue because it was the majority of their shipping trade.
I have no idea if any of this is true. The general POV is that the North wanted immediate end to the Trade, and the South did not, particularly SC.
And while the slave trade was important, I just don't think it had anything like the volume necessary to dominate the shipping trade, which employed a LOT of Americans. There just weren't that many slaves imported.
If I have time, maybe I'll go dig back thru Madison's records and see what really happened. Or at least what JM says happened. :)